5 Things Yamamoto Did to Get Hayato to Notice Him
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Yamamoto gets some great advice on how to improve his relationship with Gokudera.


**Title:** Five Things Yamamoto Did to Get Gokudera to Notice Him (and How they Failed)  
**Universe:** Reborn!  
**Theme/Topic:** As stated above.  
**Rating:** PG  
**Character/Pairing/s: **vaguelyYamaxGoku (Tsuna, Ryohei, Hibari, Reborn, Bianchi etc. in the background)  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** Uh. OOC, I guess. XD Just pretend that we're still early in the series or something.  
**Word Count:** 1,510  
**Summary:** Yamamoto gets some great advice on how to improve his relationship with Gokudera.  
**Dedication:** jadeprince's "5 Things" request on my meme request post.  
**A/N:** WELL THIS WAS HARDER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE. Sorry about the wait! And you know, the stupid. Does this even fulfill the prompt? O.o

* * *

**1.**

Getting Gokudera to notice him is not particularly hard; Yamamoto is fairly sure all he has to do is smile at the shorter boy and say, "Maa maa," to earn himself a glare and a snarled insult in reply, maybe even an attempted kick in the shin.

If that had been the kind of attention Yamamoto had been going for he thinks it would have been easy enough to obtain on his own, but wanting to be better friends with Gokudera is another thing altogether.

He's not quite sure how to go about it, and so naturally he seeks out the help of a senpai (because senpai know more and have more experience) in this matter. Yamamoto thinks that choosing a senpai who is even friendly with people who try to punch him a lot is a good place to start.

"You have to be enthusiastic! Let him see the power of your desire!" Ryohei advises him, and pumps his fist in the air. The boxer's eyes gleam. "Don't let up until he's bent to your will! Fight on!"

Yamamoto laughs at Sasagawa-senpai's energy; it doesn't seem like a bad idea at all.

He tries it the next day, pumping his fist in the air and exclaiming, "Gokudera, let's be friends!" at the top of his lungs just as Gokudera and Tsuna round the corner to the usual place where they meet to walk to school together.

At this point in his life it is probably instinctual for Gokudera to punch people in the face whenever they try to jump out at him from around corners, because that is exactly what he does to Yamamoto.

When Yamamoto manages to get away with nothing more than a bloody nose, Reborn looks pleased and tells both of them that they have "good reflexes."

When Ryohei sees Yamamoto later that morning with tissues stuffed up both nostrils, the older boy flashes a smile and a thumbs up at Yamamoto. "Good work, Yamamoto-kun! This is truly how one finds the bond of men!"

Yamamoto laughs around the pain and supposes that this means that Ryohei and Hibari are actually very close after all.

**2. **

Yamamoto tries the same thing the next day, only without the jumping out from around a corner part this time; he sees Gokudera walking down the street with his hands in his pockets. He's glowering about something when Yamamoto stops and waves at the shorter boy in greeting. "From today on, let's get to be better friends!" he says.

But Gokudera only walks right past him still grumbling to himself (and without seeing Yamamoto at all), and as it turns out, the baachan walking down the street _behind_ Gokudera is the one who hears him. She calls Yamamoto a very nice boy and agrees to his proposition; she lets him carry her groceries for her for the rest of the day since that's what good friends do.

At the end of the day she gives him mochi and he takes it home to his dad that night for dinner. He doesn't consider the day a _complete_ loss; Aoyama-baachan is really nice and next time he'll just make sure that Gokudera knows who he's talking to when he says he wants to be friends, since clearly Gokudera is the kind of guy who has lots of important thoughts on his mind when he is walking down the street.

Keeping that in mind, Yamamoto goes to bed feeling optimistic; he even saves Gokudera a piece of delicious homemade mochi.

**3.**

The next morning he takes the mochi to Tsuna's house in the hopes of finding Gokudera there; except when he knocks on the door and Bianchi answers it he finds out that Hayato is gone, probably out training.

"Ah, I see! Well, could you give him this for me?"

"Of course."

He hands her the mochi and thinks it's great that Gokudera is training even on the weekends; that's the kind of reliable friend Yamamoto wants to get closer to, after all.

So once he gives Bianchi the mochi he goes to the batting cages feeling inspired; he doesn't stop his own training until he's hit 100 homeruns (or things that look like they might be homeruns since he can't be sure because of the nets the batting cages have up), and on his way back from the field he happens to run into Tsuna and Gokudera. They're both in the middle of the street; Gokudera is lying down.

"Hi!" Yamamoto says to them, and waves. "Did you enjoy the mochi I left for you?"

Gokudera doesn't say anything; he vomits on Yamamoto's shoes and then passes out.

Yamamoto looks down at his shoes and supposes that maybe Gokudera just hasn't gotten around to eating it yet; he must have trained really hard today from the way he's acting right now!

Tsuna looks like he wants to say something to Yamamoto, but ends up not really being able to form words as they carry Gokudera back to Tsuna's house. Yamamoto can only suppose that Tsuna is tired from having trained really hard today as well; he's glad he has such diligent and reliable friends.

He hopes that in return, he can be just as reliable and diligent for the two of them.

**4.**

He tries for that reliable and diligent thing the next time they're on campus together; Gokudera is caught smoking on the rooftop by Hibari and hijinks ensue. In the middle of it all, Yamamoto ends up jumping in and shoving Gokudera aside so that he gets whacked over the head by Hibari instead. It only hurts a little, and luckily his vision only gets fuzzy around the very _edges_.

"It's fun fighting side by side, right?" Yamamoto breathes some time later, once Hibari has doled out due punishment and has left to straighten out other slackers and delinquents in other parts of school. Yamamoto turns to his side to look at Gokudera for confirmation of his declaration.

Except Gokudera isn't there. Oddly enough, he's hanging off of the rooftop by two fingers and cursing a storm at Yamamoto.

"Are you trying to _kill_ me, you moron?!" he snarls, and has two sticks of dynamite in his free hand to use once he finds a way to scrabble back onto solid ground.

Yamamoto wonders when Gokudera hid himself over the edge of the roof; he didn't even notice when the shorter boy had disappeared from sight! What a smart move!

Once again, Yamamoto is thankful that he's managed to make such reliable and intelligent friends; he hopes that he'll be able to get even closer to them soon and learn from them along the way.

"Let's get closer real soon!" he even says out loud, and smiles down at Gokudera from the roof ledge.

"Get closer _now_," Gokudera tells him suddenly, with a promising gleam in his eye.

Yamamoto grins when he hears this and thinks that things are going even better than he'd initially planned; as he kneels over to give Gokudera a hand up he tells himself he'll definitely thank Ryohei for all the great advice the older boy gave him the next time he sees him.

**5.**

Later, when Yamamoto stumbles into the infirmary after an unfortunate accident involving one of Gokudera's explosives (he must have accidentally lit it with his cigarette while Yamamoto was helping him back onto the roof), it just so happens that Yamamoto runs into Ryohei. The older boy is sitting on the floor outside Shamal's office; he is covered in bandages to the point where Yamamoto can barely recognize him at first glance.

"Yo, Yamamoto!" Ryohei greets first, and waves at his kouhai even though moving clearly hurts.

"Yo!" Yamamoto replies cheerfully, and wipes blood from the corner of his mouth. "Thank you for your advice earlier!"

Ryohei puffs up proudly when he sees Yamamoto's physical state, "It seems you've already completed the first stage!" he tells the younger boy. "Good work!"

"First stage?" Yamamoto says, and wipes blood from the other corner of his mouth this time.

Ryohei nods; something cracks uncomfortably from inside his mass of bandages when he does, but he very professionally ignores it. "Now that you've become friends you must also become rivals, because that is how you make each other stronger!"

Yamamoto stops to think about this.

A beat of silence.

Then he laughs. "Oh, okay!"

He plops down on the floor next to Ryohei to wait (Shamal won't see either of them until a girl student sees them first and worriedly calls for the doctor's help). "So tomorrow I should…"

"Challenge him to a duel," Ryohei reports, very seriously.

Yamamoto nods. "Right." Then, smiling, "You and Hibari-san must be pretty close then, right?"

Ryohei grins and shows two missing teeth. "This is the bond of men," he tells the younger boy. "You'll understand soon."

Yamamoto chuckles around the blood in his mouth and says, "I look forward to it!"

He hopes that tomorrow, Gokudera will be ready to move on to the next step in their friendship as well

**END**


End file.
